Policy Punchline

“Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party” is the latest book of Princeton politics professor and historian Julian Zelizer. The book explores how the 50th House Speaker Newt Gingrich started an era where Republicans practiced a ruthless style of partisanship that ignored the conventional norms of Washington and continually tested how far politicians could go in bending government institutions to suit their partisan purposes. In this interview, Prof. Zelizer, Tiger, and G. Terrell Seabrooks discuss some of its most salient themes and explore the many thrilling stories in this book: such as Gingrich’s takedown of Democrat House Speaker Jim Wright – a pivotal moment when Gingrich “swept the old order aside;” or, in 1983, Gingrich crafted the message of his career – branding the Democratic Party as the symbol of Washington’s corruption in the post-Watergate era… Gingrich redefined partisanship by expanding the boundaries of what was permissible in